Tag: Michon Neal

What Exactly is Cuil Fiction?

The short of it:

Cuil Fiction is a (relatively) new genre that makes room for all kinds of suppressed & oppressed stories to burst forth and take form.

There’s room for the trauma of oppression to air out & be properly addressed, but this is also the genre for those who dare to dream: of futures, parallel universes, other—better—safer—weirder—more openly dangerous—worlds near & far where characters get to have agency and be fully themselves, come what may.

It’s a genre where we can break not only the fourth wall, but the 4th dimension—and still turn to mush thinking about a crush…or a squish… and spend time talking about what’s for dinner back on your home planet.

Expect Black girls who get to be princesses, & their suitors of all genders to treat them right. Expect parents who teach consent and leaders who apologize, but expect no apologism. Expect justice to be fought for & eventually served. Expect the chance to heal.

Take what you’ve come to expect & shake it right outta your head! Expect to be delighted. Expect the unexpected. That’s #CuilFiction

The long of it:Michon sat down at age 12 and invented a new genre. One filled with absurdism and satire about all of the ideas that people took for granted like normality, amatonormativity, religion, mental states, physical capabilities, etc.

It is trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, and built of self-love rather than self-loathing. It is transformative, acknowledges the struggle, and endures until the end.

Cuil fiction regularly involves discussions of informed consent by those who span the scale of emotional intelligence. It involves many non-monogamous configurations even the alternative relationship communities have yet to acknowledge. It runs the gamut of the sexes, preferences, orientations, health, and races in intersectional ways that most haven’t seen anywhere else. It is cuil because, ironically, it depicts the variation and reality among humans that people deny or are ignorant of in real life.

How does the Cuilverse fit into Cuil Fiction?

The Cuilverse consists of a specifically integrated set of cuil fiction stories. These stories are primarily written by Michon Neal and Ripley Santo, but other authors may be invited to become canon within the Cuilverse. So the Cuilverse is a special multiverse made up cuil fiction stories.

There are no flat characters in the cuilverse, there are only dynamic people. The focus is on their relationships to themselves, others, and the world around them and not simply on how beautiful that plant in the corner is. They actually react to, change, and interact with the universe they inhabit. And while they do tend to break the fourth wall, you’ll find the science, philosophy, anatomy, and diversity is more real than people realize.

Cuil Level

Following Michon’s custom, a Cuil Level is assigned to each work published by Cuil Press. Each level is progressively further removed from oppressive reality as we know it. Cuil Levels are from one to six and in ascending order for the amount of abusrdism/abstraction/presence of surreality/ratio of queer/disabled/BIPOC to straight/cis/able-bodied people. And level zero is downright bizarre and uncomfortable for everyone.

In general, the higher the cuil level the more absurd, impossible, and abstract the events. Basically, it’s like the books are ranked from realistic fiction to anime-level creativity and beautiful insanity.

For example: The Cuil Effect Project

The integrated works that stem from The Black Tree series are called The Cuil Effect Project.

Each series within the project has different cuil level. All of the cuilness stems from one universe breaking and leaking into other universes. Events become entangled, people get zapped into other universes, and random shit happens, seemingly for no reason. The cuil levels are also affected by how far the given universe is from the crack that created all the spillover. The actions the people take either add to the insanity or work to restore it, knowingly and unknowingly.

The Allison Dutch Series, within the Cuil Effect Project, is cuil level 4. The many fantasy creatures (vampires, witches, and lycans, oh my!) put it well outside of reality-as-we-know it. However the series is based in a variant of Earth today and includes a lot of real history and little known facts.

As nonsensical as it all seems closer to the break, however, there is actually point and a purpose. All the stories and series within the project are inextricably and meaningfully integrated.

Michon Neal is the originator of Cuil Press and our resident Gentleman Goddess and visionary. Today ze is sharing a glimpse of Lilith from hir upcoming book In the Time of Toba.

Between the mountains on the far side of our Valley, I saw my beloved friend drop down from rock to rock. With the ease of a treed creature — or perhaps even a skyed one — Lilith bounded along the backs of my beastly brethren, sistren, and otherkin. Her flips and slides and dashes and leaps drew a whirl of dust and particles in her wake that eddied and blossomed behind and around her.

Several Dragons sniffed the air appreciatively, breathing in information on our visitors, digesting her tears and fears. I appreciated the candor that always accompanied Lilith, streaming about her countenance as if it were a set of wings or armor. Across the Valley, wings of crimson, gold, sheer blue, and translucent violet stirred, bringing in the delicious secrets on the wind and in the beams of moonlight. The stars bent their own light to us, rolling through velveteen space and kissed only by time.

With skin the rich brown of fertile, glorious Earth, Lilith drew nearer, with the red moon throwing up highlights of maroon, orange, and purple in the deeper layers of her dermis. A bit of silver edged her curves and angles; she literally shone, lit from within.

Not far behind her, a shadowy figure traversed, mirroring her path in kind, but of a much larger size. A Nephilim, diamond-winged and tall as one of my claws, where she was hardly up to my tooth. He revelled in the essence of her recent past, playing in the memories she’d left behind. He danced into her footsteps, ever the faithful double. With glee, he found his place atop my head as she nestled in by my eye. I could smell him peering down upon her, his curiosity unfurling like the open entrails of one of those delicious unicorns. My tail languidly curled and swung back and forth as I readied myself. Samael was a well of mischief, but he was nothing if not fair.

After all, he wasn’t the Left Hand of God for nothing.

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About Cuil Press

Lilith found the book world decidedly lacking in black enby rulers of the solar system, polyamory romances with disabled characters, and re-incarnated goddesses with chips on their shoulder from millennia of dealing with patronizing All Powerful Deities.
Ze hooked up with a couple of other authors and pitched an idea—let’s start a new kind of publisher.
And here we are.

About Cuil Press

Making space in publishing for black enby rulers of the solar system and polyamory romance with disabled characters.